The present disclosure relates generally to mobile devices, and in particular to techniques for using mobile devices to obtain search results based on the locations of those mobile devices.
Computers and other electronic devices can communicate with each other over networks such as local area networks, wide area networks, and the Internet. Mobile devices such as cell phones, including so-called smart phones, can communicate with each other wirelessly over a variety of wireless networks including 3G and 4G networks. Such mobile devices also can communicate over the Internet with remote servers using protocols such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Internet Protocol (IP), and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Mobile devices enable people (or “users”) to communicate with each other from a variety of different locations. The portable nature of mobile devices makes possible remote interactions between multiple people as those people move from place to place. During any given remote interaction between a pair of people using mobile devices to communicate with each other, those people can be located at places far away from the places at which they were located during previous interactions. Such interactions can be audio only, or text only, or can involve some combination of motion video and audio—as in the case of Facetime conversations conducted between two iPhones.
Although such remote interactions are a convenient means of keeping in contact with friends who are not in a person's immediate vicinity, at times, people remotely communicating with each other using mobile devices can sometimes desire to meet physically at some mutually agreeable location in order to engage in activities that are not typically possible when those people are at significant distances from each other. For example, two friends might want to get together to share dinner. Choosing a mutually agreeable location can be a more involved process than might be initially suspected. When two friends are conducting a conversation using their mobile devices, they might each need to inform each other verbally—either through text or vocal communication—where the other one currently is. This process can become more complicated if the description of either friend's current location is not immediately recognizable to the other, as is often the case where the listener has never been to the place that his friend is describing.
Even after the friends have obtained some notion of where the other is located, neither of them might have the faintest notion of suitable establishments to which both of them could travel within a reasonable amount of time. One or both of them might be unfamiliar with the area. If a dinner meeting is planned, then the friends might not know which restaurants are in the area.